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Can You Predict NHL Success From +1 Season Data?

August 14, 2013, 8:00 PM |

We’ve heard a lot about draft year scoring and how it predicts NHL performance – but that’s not where a prospect’s pre-NHL development usually ends. So the question is, do subsequent seasons such as a player’s performance in his draft+1 year help forecast future NHL success or failure?

To investigate, I took 5 drafts worth of first round forwards from 2004-2008 and separated them into tiers (Replacement, NHLer, Elite) based on my subjective view of the player’s quality. We’ll only focus on guys who didn’t turn pro for the purposes of this study since guys who turn pro in their draft +1 season can see a drastic change in their circumstances and usage, suppressing their output.

What I’m really interested is if a massive step forward in the draft+1 season is predictive of future success in the NHL (and/or, if running in place or stepping back suggests future failure). For the purposes of this, I’m considering a big improvement to be equal to an NHLE increase of 10 or above.

The Data

Replacement Player

DY NHLE

+1 NHLE

Delta

NHL Results

Rob Schremp

29.3

35.7

+6.4

114GP, 54P

Kris Chucko

18.8

16.4

-2.4

2GP, 0P

Lukas Kaspar

9.8

21.3

+11.5

16GP, 4P

Petteri Nokelainen

8.9

17.0

+8.1

245GP, 41P

Lauri Tukonen

7.6

10.3

+2.7

5GP, 0P

Alexandre Picard

28.5

32.2

+3.7

67GP, 2P

Kenndal McArdle

26.0

24.3

-1.7

42GP, 3P

Alex Bourret

32.6

41.9

+9.3

0GP, 0P

Ryan O’Marra

24.2

31.1

+6.9

33GP, 7P

Marek Zagrapan

34.2

36.3

+2.1

0GP, 0P

Jack Skille

17.4*

17.6

+0.2

178GP, 49P

Trevor Lewis

27.5

29.0

+1.5

203GP, 37P

James Sheppard

31.3

42.2

+10.9

256GP, 53P

Jim O’Brien

11.7

19.3

+7.6

63GP, 12P

Patrick White

15.4

7.5

-7.9

0GP, 0P

Riley Nash

20.0

29.9

+9.9

37GP, 10P

Angelo Esposito

32.4

30.3

-2.1

0GP, 0P

Logan MacMillan

19.9

21.9

+2.0

0GP, 0P

Colton Gillies

11.4

19.9

+8.5

154GP, 18P

Zach Hamill

33.2

27.5

-5.7

20GP, 4P

Daultan Leveillé

7.1**

15.0

+7.9

0GP, 0P

Greg Nemisz

24.2

29.1

+4.9

15GP, 1P

Mattias Tedenby

10.9

7.3

-3.6

105GP, 29P

Anton Gustafsson

12.7

11.8

-0.9

0GP, 0P

Joe Colborne

21.5

26.1

+4.6

16GP, 6P

Zach Boychuk

29.0

32.6

+3.6

85GP, 20P

Kyle Beach

24.6

24.6

0

0GP, 0P

Nikita Filatov

15.1

29.6

+14.5

53GP, 14P

*.20 Estimate for NAHL.

**.07 Estimate for the GOPHL.

***.09 Estimate for Russia-3.

NHL Players

DY NHLE

+1 NHLE

Delta

NHL Results

Wojtek Wolski

26.1

26.8

+0.7

451GP, 267P

Travis Zajac

21.8

28.1

+6.3

471GP, 275P

Lauri Korpikoski

13.7

6.5

-7.2

336GP, 113P

Kyle Chipchura

18.5

28.1

+9.6

262GP, 58P

Alexander Radulov

12.7

28.4

+15.7

154GP, 102P

Drew Stafford

29.9

29.4

-0.5

443GP, 264P

Rostislav Olesz

20.8

16.8

-4.0

355GP, 132P

Blake Wheeler

18.9

16.6

-2.3

372GP, 232P

Steve Downie

29.4

37.3

+7.9

274GP, 138P

Andrew Cogliano

22.2

24.1

+1.9

458GP, 195P

Nicklas Bergfors

2.7

22.2

+19.5

173GP, 83P

Martin Hanzal

15.6****

20.5

+4.9

391GP, 182P

Devin Setoguchi

22.8

31.4

+8.6

384GP, 222P

Gilbert Brule

30.6

34.6

+4.0

296GP, 95P

Benoit Pouliot

23.9

31.4

+7.5

291GP, 124P

Nick Foligino

26.5

32.8

+6.3

396GP, 167P

Patrik Bergulnd

5.6

40.5

+34.9

358GP, 188P

Chris Stewart

34.5

33.1

-1.4

319GP, 202P

Michael Grabner

18.4

24.6

+6.2

219GP, 116P

Jiri Tlusty

8.4

22.6

+14.2

276GP, 112P

Bryan Little

41.9

46.2

+4.3

404GP, 227P

Michael Frolik

6.9

34.5

+27.6

349GP, 151P

Peter Mueller

27.4

37.6

+10.2

297GP, 160P

Kyle Okposo

23.8

33.6

+9.8

319GP, 185P

Derick Brassard

49.2

43.8

-5.4

322GP, 180P

Mikael Backlund

4.9

10.4

+5.5

170GP, 62P

Max Pacioretty

21.5

35.4

+13.9

246GP, 153P

Alexei Chereponov

40.0

39.4

-0.6

0GP, 0P

Lars Eller

18.5

12.4

-6.1

209GP, 77P

Brandon Sutter

19.7

20.4

+0.7

334GP, 126P

Jakub Voracek

35.9

46.9

+11.0

367GP, 229P

Kyle Turris

30.0

32.7

+2.7

234GP, 104P

James Van Riemsdyk

34.2

36.9

+2.7

244GP, 131P

Tyler Ennis

32.0

34.3

+2.3

187GP, 123P

Jordan Eberle

26.4

29.8

+3.4

195GP, 156P

Cody Hodgson

30.8

42.7

+11.9

139GP, 77P

Colin Wilson

31.8

43.0

+11.2

210GP, 103P

****.16 translation to Czech-2, which is an estimate based on Bruce Peter’s recent work.

28 Replacement-level players – 11% took a generous step forward, 57% saw a mild improvement, 32% took a step backwards or ran in place. The average NHLE delta was +3.6.

37 NHLers – 27% made a big improvement in their draft+1 year, 46% saw an improvement, 27% took a step backwards or ran in place. The average NHLE delta was +6.4.

10 Elite-level players – 50% took a massive step forward, 30% saw an improvement, 20% took a step backwards or ran in place. The average NHLE delta was +9.0.

It seems that the better the group of players, the greater the chance of a significant improvement in their draft+1 year or an overall improvement. This seems like an intuitive result and the preceding initial investigation seems to support it. The percentages above also suggest something we were looking to get an answer for: if a player takes a big step forward, he’s more likely to join the group of elite players down the line than he is to join the group of replacements.

Of course, it’s important to keep context in mind. It’s somewhat misleading to look at the elite chart and see that only 5 of the 10 guys are over what is usually deemed to be the cutoff line for elite players in their +1 year (NHLE of 35). Kopitar, Ovechkin and Malkin all played in men’s leagues and TJ Oshie only played 11 games in the USHL in his draft year due to injury. Andrew Ladd is really the only player who played in a developmental league and didn’t reach 35.

There were only 7 players who scored over 35 in their draft year – Bryan Little, Derrick Brassard, Alexei Chereponov, Jakub Voracek, Bobby Ryan, Claude Giroux and Logan Couture. All of those players are first liners with the exception of Chereponov, whose NHL ceiling we will unfortunately never know.

Conclusion

Taking a step back in a +1 year might not mean a given player is significantly less likely to make the NHL, but it does suggest that he is a lot less likely to be elite and/or will probably be replacement level.

To me, it seems there is enough evidence to suggest that the bigger the step forward, the better chance a player has to join elite company. There also seems to be a correlation between an increase in NHLE in a player’s +1 year and the quality of the player overall. Of course, there are exceptions, but if you’re drafting players and expecting exceptions you’re probably doing something wrong.

A more through investigation with a bigger sample of players which calculates the correlation of their production at junior/college/lower leagues to their NHL production is the next step.

Unrelated Nations Business

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This is just a trial run of the service. During the season, SNEWS is going to give an embeddable player which Nations writers can use to add stuff like press conferences and game highlights right into specific posts.

Give it a try and let us know what you think. If the trial phase works out, we’re hoping to start putting useful video content into as many posts as possible.

It will be fun wathcing our three 1st round picks this next year to see what happens with their + 1 seasons.

I think Flames fans have had enough bad luck in drafting for the hockey gods to finally smile upon us. C’mon hockey gods… Poirer to lead QMJHL in scoring, Klimchuk to lead WHL and Monahan to lead CHL in scoring…. it could happen… right… sigh.

JA , really interesting stuff here. There looks to be a very high correlation between a Draft+1 steps forward and NHL success, and a negative correlation when a player takes a step back.

Angelo Esposito is very intriguing in that he had one of the highest NHLE on the lists in his draft year, and while he put up a decent NHLE in his Draft+1 year, he still took a step back. How much rope do you give a big scorer?
You can’t be too quick to judge after a single season, but it will be interesting to keep an eye on the Flames prospects, with this information in mind.

Now if KEENAN KANZIG puts up 6 points and a +4 NHLE delta, does that make him a bonified future star?

The results are very interesting as they tend to prove a correlation between two things that were only speculative before.
Your next analysis should concentrate on the correlation between before-DY and DY… Because its easy to say that a player with good numbers and good improvement the first year has a better chance to join the elite group… What we want to know is HOW can we predict if the player is going to have those good numbers in DY or not. (Maybe by comparing historical stats between different leagues and their results in DY)